


The Secret History

by Wolferii



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, Protective Steve, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, Winter Soldier!Bucky, bucky doesn't remember, psycho bucky, sad vibes soz
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 06:37:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1459591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolferii/pseuds/Wolferii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find him in a drug den in some hole of the Uralmash district just outside Yekaterinburg, but not as they had expected to find him.</p><p>(It's enough for Steve, though).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret History

I

 

_“You know how this ends. There’s nothing you can do to change it. So make peace with it now. Ready your hands for the callus, shred the cloth for bandages, prepare the rosaries.”_

 

x

 

They find him in a drug den in some hole of the Uralmash district just outside Yekaterinburg, and Steve walks through it, looking every inch the sun-tinged saviour, a golden anomaly amongst the stained mattresses and needles, pausing at a blackened stove top and glancing backwards, into the thick of the den. He’s not afraid, he rarely is anymore-- at least not for himself, but he is uneasy; the place is all decay and dead flesh, people asleep on couches, teeth grinding.

 

The hallway is hung with muslin sheets, dirt-tinged; they sway like snowy cataracts, beyond which is the final unopened door, which surely leads to him-- if Intel can be trusted. Steve braces for what he may find, the images from previous rooms altering his expectations until he’s half certain he’ll find a scrawny, addled wreck, not the winter soldier.

 

He pauses at the door; it takes real courage to open it. The room is dark, the windows covered, but Steve has no time to properly observe his surroundings because Bucky stands in the entrance, gun in hand, and all Steve can feel despite the barrel aimed at his chest is relief, because from what he can tell, his friend is whole; skinny, sick, but solidly in one piece and aggressive enough to be somewhat sane.

 

Bucky is wearing a mixture of civilian clothes and the regulation black of what he wore in New York. He’s unkempt, maybe suffering; his arm does not look right and he holds himself gingerly. He’s as fierce as he ever was though, teeth bared.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

It’s nearly growled, his subtle and terrible eyes are narrow with their mistrust of him, but Steve just breathes for the first time in weeks, months, and holds a placating hand out towards him, catching the tremor and wanting to help, knowing that the sweatshirt the other man wears is far too thin for the Russian winter. His heart is full to breaking, and he stands too long staring, prompting Bucky to jab him nervously in the ribcage with the gun, “I said, what are you doing here?”

                 

“Buck--“

                 

“Wrong.”

 

But the door remains open. Bucky’s voice had been weak, hoarse.

 

“Just put the gun down, I’m here to help.”

 

Bucky glares, “You owe me nothing.”

 

“You saved my life.”

 

“So don’t risk it now.”

 

It’s a two move disarm, and he’s got Bucky tightly held to the ground, gun skittering away across the floor. Bucky fights like a scalded cat; all teeth and pure viciousness, but he is pinned; Steve’s bigger, and Bucky doesn’t seem to have had a substantial meal in weeks.

 

“I’m taking you back, Buck,” it’s whispered into the nape of the other’s neck, not authoritative, just resigned-- and he’s happy to be close to him, at least this is the end of it-- all the tracking, the uncertainty of where he is, if he’s alive. Even if he’s holding a shell, it’s a living, breathing, arguing shell-- and that means something, Steve tells himself, it absolutely means something.

 

“Don’t.”

 

They struggle again and it’s useless, and abruptly Bucky goes dead limp, head lolling back onto the floor, he faces Steve, eyes flicking over the other man’s face, held by his upper arms, trapped against the grunge of the floorboards, his hair (which was once so richly coloured, even in New York, with its undercurrent of auburn beneath the chestnut) stringy and dull, spread out beneath him.

 

“Don’t,” he repeats, and it’s not pleading; the winter soldier is too proud, too harsh for that, but he’s asking instead of commanding, this time.

 

Steve doesn’t grip tightly enough to hurt, he can’t, and he sits back a little, gentles his hands further, “Not to them, just home.”

 

“Not my home.”

 

The opportunity is seized, and Bucky is gone in an instant, retreating to the back of the room, against the wall. Steve stands, and steps towards him (when he so clearly should have cut his losses and stepped back). There’s no resisting it, never was. At this point, he doesn’t even want his old friend back as much as he wants to get him as far from this pit as he humanly can; the rest he-- they can deal with, but for now he just needs to leave. The silence of the twelve or so other inhabitants with their bleached out irises and rotten limbs jars him, and he reaches out again, hopefully to coax, reassure, “It could be, if you’d let it.”

 

Bucky looks slumped, exhausted, “I knew you.”

 

“You did.”

 

“In a different life.”

 

“Not a different life, Buck.”

 

Steve feels the stare, those wide eyes narrowed, reddened from what must be a lack of sleep. There’s a shade of conflict about the expression, but it’s not his old friend. He’s standing with the winter soldier. Perhaps he always will be. The thought does not hurt as much as it ought to.

 

Stepping forward again, he dares to lay a hand on him, and it’s so careful, so deliberate, that Bucky will see it coming. The full body shudder that he gets in return, almost cowering-- hurts. He perseveres, running a thumb along the frayed fabric, “Let me help.”

 

Bucky has gone stock-still; a predator cornered, compromised.

 

“There’s a life for you, if you want it,” he’ll say anything to cajole him now, even if it’s a lie (and it’s not a lie, if he’s got any say in it. SHIELD will want Bucky, there’s certainty in that-- and if that’s much of a life, he’s not sure. But Steve intends to see him through it, if it’s possible), “Come back to the hotel, at least-- you don’t look right, Buck.”

 

Nothing about this place looks right; to Steve it looks like the most pure of hells-- and the most disconcerting aspect is how Bucky fits here, he looks like he’s been here for months. He doesn’t look like he’s on anything-- the soldier is as alert as he’s ever been-- but how is Steve to know? He thinks of the stovetop, the pots and the syringes and wonders what it is they cook in there, what offshoot of morphine or heroin is concocted in this house to leave everyone in it so ruined.

 

“I knew you, but I don’t anymore,” Bucky’s gone hunched, a shoulder drawn up in an effort to put distance between himself and Steve. His lips are slightly drawn back, teeth revealed in a wolfish growl.

 

There is no explicable reason as to why the expression makes him shudder, but it does, as if a prehistoric instinct had rattled him in warning from the inside outwards. It is like looking at an image of a venomous spider, a trypophobic repulsion that is all simultaneously fight or flight, and curiosity. He’s holding something dangerous; something trained to be deadly-- which has lived with that knowledge for decades. This is not Bucky, and it will never be.

 

“Maybe that’s enough for now,” Steve is unflinching, “you recognize me, let’s start from there.”

 

“You should leave now.”

 

“Sorry pal, can’t get rid of me that easy.”

 

Bucky’s head snaps sideways and he listens, some inaudible noise from the depths of the house alerting him-- imagined or not. His attention is back on Steve instantaneously, he’s bristling, making small, jerking movements to try and free himself, “You should leave.”

  
“Not without you.”

 

“I’m not him.”

 

“S’okay.”

 

The relief of finding Bucky has not worn off enough to leave Steve to feel disheartened by the reaction. He hopes with enough fervour to convince himself that this could someday be fixed. Maybe he will not get his old friend back exactly, but perhaps they could still find something-- some offshoot that falls close.

 

The winter soldier appears to have run out of retorts, and the only alternative to remaining against the wall is to acquiesce to Steve’s plea. He chews the inside of his lip, eyes lowering to the right corner of the room.

 

That’s the expression that does it-- it’s so fundamentally _Bucky_ , the Bucky that Steve knew, the old sarcastic friend who knew him better than anyone else, and he in turn knew. He’s pouting, he’s done it before, and Steve understands the meaning of that expression absolutely. It would be comical if he weren’t so simultaneously glad and heartbroken.

 

Bucky looks back at him, lids lowered, all resignation. This is not a fight he can win, if it’s a fight at all. Directionless wandering will kill him eventually, even the winter soldier knows that-- and Steve, though foreign to him, seems like a direction.

 

He does not make a movement to leave, he just catches Steve’s eye, his own gaze level, manic. Holding the stare, Steve loosens his grip, finding that the assassin remains stationary, does not bolt, as he would have expected.

 

It’s the pause gives him away; it’s surrender, and it’s not. Maybe just a temporary concession. Steve takes what he can get.

 

The rest of the house is still silent, he hears the winter soldier’s breath; a mild heat against his skin. It’s slight and wheezing, and he knows he’s won this round.

 

 

II

 

_“When he explains that he cannot love, that he will never be yours alone, when he tells you how the meek, the gluttons, the tempted, the proud, are his angels, do not mourn. Smile, feed him, wash his hair.”_

x

 

Bucky enters after him and stands in the middle of the room, looking like he has been dropped there, hanging upright but swaying, his attention raking over the windows, over all of the possible escape routes. He could bolt at any moment and Steve knows this, wants to make it clear to Bucky that he's not necessarily trapped, but has some kind of say in being here. So he's left the window open, a thin breeze entering, the Russian chill entering the regulated heat of the hotel room. The other man is so incongruous standing in the warmth and relative dullness, the off white curtains and powder blue carpet-- It's so mundane, out of context with regard to the winter soldier.

 

It catches Steve off guard to be in the same room with him like this, and it is more like being in close proximity with a feral animal, and as unpredictable, something that is both beguiling and savage, but with a hazardously lovely fur pelt, and liquid eyes. It's strange and not strange, mostly just seems like a dream sequence that he's replayed before, in the myriad of similar dreams of the last few months since New York.

 

Steve resists the urge to use the other man's name again, he can't help over-saying it, maybe it's the novelty of having him back, of having someone to address it to instead of the usual assembly of ghosts in half memories from their early days, "hey, do you want to use the shower, or the bath-- you look like you could do with it." A latent protective instinct has slowly started to surface in him, and he just wants everything to be good, to be easy and safe for Bucky. If he could offer him anything more familiar, or vaguely comforting he would, he wishes he could. Bucky turns to him, a long stare divulging nothing but the absence of what ought to be there.

 

Bucky makes no movement towards the bathroom or even to sit down. He does not examine where Steve has been living the past few days, showing no interest in the room aside from the possible exits. The schematics. It's all bare bones with him now, instead of that former jaunty humor, it's just hollow dispassion.

 

"Work with me here, Buck, c'mon," Steve shrugs at him, motioning to the couch, "sit a minute?"

 

The winter soldier's eyes follow, and he glances back at Steve. It is a terse moment before he steps across to the couch. He sits, stiffly, spine curving at the shoulders as if he is still holding his defensive stance, curled into his ribs.

 

The recurring thought, the one that aches and haunts and dogs at the back of Steve's mind is that _this is not Bucky_. But he forces himself to think of the difficult look that he had seen cross the other man‘s face back in the drug den, that stubborn petulance that did not belong to Hydra and did not belong to the scientists or anyone else other than James Barnes, it is enough to validate all of this for now, and he joins the man on the couch, tentatively occupying the other end, leaving several feet of space in between them. Bucky looks uncomfortable, as if unused to being in a normal space, without any kind of mission. Aimlessness is not something he imagines the winter soldier was ever intended for, and every instinct clashes with his situation.

 

The soldier defied his programming once, and now he's paying for it. The Russians did their job well, that is one thing of which Steve is sure, because he's sitting opposite a man turned to hardware, stripped down to the most basic elements and reconfigured, iron instruments ticking across his frontal lobe.

 

This is not an ideal world and there is no deprogramming that exists for this, all that Steve does know is that the body heals and the body remembers, and that is enough to give him something to hope for. He had dispelled the idea a while back that he could regain the former relationship he had with Barnes, that fixing would be even a remote possibility.

 

He does not know the extent of the brain damage, or of the personality switch, if they are physical wounds in some deep corner of the brainstem, beneath a vital sector of feeling and of functioning, or trained into him through methods that Steve prefers not to imagine.

 

"You're welcome to stay here, I'll get you a couple of blankets," he watches the other man‘s profile, free of the black kohl he had worn at Hydra‘s behest, but just as darkly ringed, the swathes beneath his eyes are purpled, bruised.

 

There is no response, so Steve lays the blankets on the couch beside him, and stands. Before he closes the door to the bedroom he turns, “It‘ll be fine, you’ll see.“

 

Once again he’s answered with dour silence. The assassin raises his eyes to Steve after a long moment, but drops it, looking jumpy.

 

Steve shuts the door, listens for movement that does not come.

 

 

 

 

 

III

 

_“In the dry burn of dawn, after the last of the lashes, the thorns and the spittle, when his limp body is laid at your feet, remember the night you loved him, the ember of his eyes and the way the words came like honey.“_

_x_

Light filters through the curtains and Steve startles awake, there is silence in the rest of the hotel room, and yesterday returns in a shuddering projection of dark eyes and dark hair, and he sits bold upright, attention immediately on the door. Rising, he hesitates, then glances into the sitting room.

 

The winter soldier sits on the couch; same as where he’d been left the night before. His hair is damp, sticking to his forehead in black whorls.

 

“Morning,“ Steve walks to the kitchenette, he turns on the kettle, and collects cups from above the sink. It’s normal; the ceramics clink, he finds a jar of instant coffee.

 

There’s a dull stare that he can feel from across the room, so he looks up and meets it, greeted by the picture of confused mistrust, and Steve becomes aware that he is now the keeper of the king of all strays; beaten, undomesticated, but above all, floundering.

 

But Steve has never been immune to Bucky, and he knows he never will be. Hell or high water, he’s trapped in this for the long run. Not trapped, he’s willing; more than willing.

 

He makes the coffee as he used to and adds two sugars to the assassin’s; he’s an optimist, even now. Especially now.

 

When the mug is put down infront of him, Bucky does not glance upwards.

 

“You shower? I’m glad you stuck around,“ Steve sits in one of the armchairs alongside.

 

Bucky’s eyes flick to him, to the coffee cup. He doesn’t pick it up.

 

“There’s a flight leaving for New York this evening, and I’d like you to come along, Buck.“

 

The winter soldier reaches tentatively for the mug, and Steve wonders what they fed him in whatever cage they used to keep him. If they fed him, if it was intravenous, through a tube.

 

He remembers New York, the way the other man’s body had moved fluidly in combat; as if engineered for that precise and specific purpose rather than what it was truly made for; the turn of his wrist and vagabond laugh; all dirt and old Brooklyn.

 

There is a towel draped over the back of the couch; he must be somewhat functional-- at least the basics are still there.

 

Having felt the other’s eyes on him, the assassin looks up again.

 

A beat. It’s heavy, and furtive. But charged.

 

It’s also ruinous.

 

(Steve knows he’s done for).

 

Their old electricity is not entirely gone. Maybe chemistry is atomic, cellular. Not even a team of Nazi scientists could tease that out.

 

He’s not Bucky, Steve reminds himself. This is different, a timeline gone wrong; diverged from where they both should have died in the war. He’s not Bucky; Steve wonders how much that matters, if they could rebuild from the ground up. It’s not like they have a time constraint.

 

The Russian (not American, not anymore) looks away, sips the coffee.

 

Steve does the same, and the central heating whirrs, the wind outside hammering on the windows. Bucky’s jawline is too visible, hungrily standing out, and Steve glares into his mug.

 

“Buck?“

 

There’s an irritated look in response, “Don’t call me that.“

 

Steve winces, “What would you prefer?“

 

Dark hair sticks to the other’s neck, he shakes his head, “Don’t call me anything.“

 

Silence. Then:

 

“I’ll join you in America.”

 

Bucky’s coffee is untouched on the table (sometimes tastes can change, Steve thinks. He’ll try tea next time).

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Quotations used are from Jeanann Verlee's poem "Lessons on Loving a Prophet".


End file.
